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I was searching through my unpublished entries for something to post today and I found this and added some illustrations. I wrote it way back at the beginning of September when Boyfriend and I first moved to Hamilton.

Boyfriend was being all whiny yesterday about how we never do real-person things like hang out with friends or wake up when it's still morning or eat at the Olive Garden. I was like "I hate pasta and we don't have any friends here yet... but we can wake up early if you want."

Boyfriend: "What time should we get up?"

Me: "I don't know. What time do successful people wake up?"

Boyfriend: "Probably around seven?"

Me: "Then we're getting up at 6:40."

It might have worked out better for me if I didn't get so damn excited about nothing at night. When most people are getting ready for bed, I'm sitting on my couch, vibrating with pent-up energy. I have no idea what I get so excited about, but whatever it is, it's really, really, really exciting!

This problem is especially acute when I know that I have to wake up early. Whenever I have to wake up early, I feel like I'm getting ready to embark on a dangerous adventure. I imagine that this is the same feeling you would get if you were trying to fall asleep the night before your first summit of Mt. Everest. Like you're either going to die or accomplish something amazing.

I try to talk myself down from this hyper-excited state, but it usually only exacerbates the problem. I say to myself "Go to sleep. There is absolutely nothing exciting happening tomorrow. You are probably just going to wake up, crawl downstairs and fall asleep on the couch." But then I feel like I'm trying to trick myself. I think "This is probably just a cover-up for what's really going to happen tomorrow morning... I'm probably going to die. Or win a million dollars!"

Around three or four o'clock, I will usually have exhausted my body's stores of adrenaline and I'll fall asleep instantly. This is when I start having crazy dreams. For some unknown reason, my crazy dreams usually start in an empty parking garage. The parking garage has little or nothing to do with the rest of the dream, but it's always there, like a portal to crazyland, signaling that the rest of the night is going to be full of flying and running and falling and spaceship crashes and Boyfriend is probably going to cheat on me with a robot and then pretend that it didn't happen even though I know it did because he has a glowing green spot on his face since apparently that's what happens when you sleep with robots and then I try to punch him in the face, but my hands are spindly and weak and it turns out that Boyfriend is actually a shapeshifter because suddenly he's a bear and instead of arguing about how he slept with a robot, I'm running away and trying to find Santa Claus because that's the only way to survive a bear attack but it doesn't matter anyway because now I have to fight a gila monster. And suddenly there's salsa music. I get absurdly angry at the music. It feels like it has been playing for hours and I am so sick of it that by the time I wake up and realize that it's actually my alarm clock, I'm ready to fight an army of orcs with my bare hands. My face and pillow are plastered with saliva. My eyes are almost swollen shut because I was sleeping on my face. I'm disoriented and angry.

Obviously this is not the part I was excited about. Actually, I don't even remember what that part was. At that point, all I know is that I'll never be excited about anything again because everything is stupid. My alarm clock is stupid, my pillow is stupid, the sun is stupid, feelings are stupid, grass is stupid, Oprah is stupid, bricks are stupid, birds are stupid - everything is stupid and I hate it.

This feeling usually subsides a little once I get coffee, but on this particular morning, I did not get coffee because Boyfriend was like "Do you want to go for a run?"

Me: "Running is stupid."

Boyfriend: "You don't really think running is stupid."

Me: "Right now I do."

Boyfriend: "Okay, well I'm going."

Me: "Wait! FINE. I'll go."

Boyfriend: "Okay, put on your shoes."

Me: "I'll put on your face."

Boyfriend: "That doesn't make sense."

Me: "You don't make sense."

And then we started talking about Face-Off.

Okay. I now understand why I didn't publish this before. There's no real ending to it. I must have realized this when I wrote it, but for some reason I forgot. I thought "Oh, I'll just draw some pictures, edit a few details and write a nice little closing paragraph!" But I was wrong. It's not that simple.

I can't just be like "And then we went running and it really sucked and I yelled at some cows just because they were there. The End." So I'm going to make up an ending.

After we finished talking about Face-Off, Boyfriend and I headed out the door to go for our run. That's when we noticed the zombies. There was an entire herd of zombies in our yard! We were like "Go away, zombies!" But the zombies were like "NO!" so we had to fight them. Boyfriend went inside and got his assault rifle and I just started punching. And then Boyfriend was like "Get out of the way!" And I dove to the side and he started mowing down zombies and our neighbors didn't even care because they were dead.

Anyway, fighting zombies turned out to be really easy because zombies are slow and stupid and Boyfriend and I are fast and smart. We just shot their knees out and then kicked their heads in. It was really violent.

Anyway, we killed all the zombies and then went for a run and it sucked and I yelled at cows just because they were there.

P.S. I don't know if there is a proper name for a group of zombies, so I just called them a "herd of zombies." But it's probably actually something like a "flight of zombies" or a "kindle of zombies" or a "bantam of zombies" or something. It's almost definitely a bantam of zombies.

UPDATE: I'm officially putting my support behind "zeppelin of zombies" submitted by Going Like 60, even though I hate alliteration. "A zeppelin of zombies" just sounds so natural, especially since I used to get Led Zeppelin and Rob Zombie mixed up. I know. There is nothing even remotely similar or confusing about those two names aside from the tenuous connection between three letter first names and last names starting with Z. I probably shouldn't even admit it publicly, but I just did. I confuse Led Zeppelin and Rob Zombie and that's why I'm supporting the term "a zeppelin of zombies." At the very least, getting that term officially recognized would lend some credibility to my confusion, even if only retroactively.

Since there is no official name for a group of zombies yet (though a few have been suggested) I propose that we act to get the phrase "a zeppelin of zombies"officially recognized.

UPDATE: Shit. "Legion of zombies" has also been suggested and now I don't know which one to choose. Thanks Maggie... way to make something that used to be totally simple not simple anymore. This may have to be settled with a poll.

Ohio is cold and boring. My grandparents are kind of fun to hang out with, but my grandpa's pretty much limited to the house, so i watch tv and read and talk to my grandma and try not to take the lord's name in vain on accident. I ran 8 miles yesterday! With the wind it was probably 10 degrees out.

Oh my goodness...you just called Oprah stupid. If I were you, I'd watch my back, because Oprah has people everywhere. But then, Boyfriend has an assault rifle, and you have zombie killing skills, so that would be a pretty even match. You have a better advantage, actually. But seriously...watch your back. Oprah is like a modern day Jesus.

I do that pretty much every night, too. Even when I know there's nothing to get excited about, because the only thing to wake up for is "Philosophical Perspectives" which I find especially stupid after like 2.3 hours of sleep. Zombies would be a welcome distraction from philosophy.

I'd hate to live in your neighborhood ... for any number of reasons. Primarily because of the infestation of zombie bantams, but also because of the psycho chick who lives there, eats too many sugary foods during the day, stays up until three or four in the morning, and keeps everyone else awake by screaming into her pillow: "You were SO cheating on me with a robot! Look at the green spot on your face!! Take THAT! Ahh! A bear! Help! Help me! Santa H. Claus, help meeeeeeeee!"

I get that not-sleepy excited thing the day before I am about to take an airplane somewhere. Every. Single. Time.

So of course the next day when I need to be all strong and ready to face standing in lineups for a hundred years and sitting really close to strangers for hours and arriving somewhere scary like ANOTHER AIRPORT AAAH I'm tired and grumpy.

I don't think I've ever been in a good mood at an airport.

Oh,except the time I stayed in a hotel inside an airport and then the next morning I hung out there all day and because it was the Mexico City airport it was the size of like 85 regular airports and there was so much to do there! WEEEEEEEEEE!

P.S. Today I got up at 4:30am to do some work and it's now 5:59 and I've done nothing.

Your pictures make me so happy; especially ones that include blood, zombies, and roundhouse kicks to the face. That is probably the single best picture I have ever seen in my life. It gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside. You know, like when you were little and stayed the night at your grandma's house and she put your towel in the dryer so it was warm when you got out of the bath? No? Well, then your grandma was a bitch.

P.S. Appologize to your grandma for me; I don't really think she's a bitch. (Unless she really is a bitch. In which case you should definitely show that selfish bitch what's up with a well placed kick to the head).

P.P.S. Matthew J. Bevis: I am in love with the fact that you said Santa H. Claus..that also gives me the warm and fuzzies.

That's about how I look and feel in the morning. I'm always up all night, and then I either have really crazy dreams or dream absolutely nothing, but either way it leaves me completely exhausted. Right now I'm wondering why it is necessary to be at work rather than at home sleeping. Grr.

I totally know how you feel. I do this almost every night. Around 8 I begin to build with energy. It climaxes at about 10 or 11 when I begin to run around, and generally annoy everyone in the house. By the time my body is tired, and I'm finished with my tomfoolery, my brain decides to think. This thinking will often be accompanied by laughing, so I hit the sack about 2 or 3.

If I were you I would try running at night instead of in the morning. You burn off all the energy and, since you HAVE the energy at night, you might as well use it. I always feel overly happy at night and I'm like "I WANT TO EXERCISE! I WANT TO BOX WITH AN ALIEN OR MAYBE PREDATOR!!!!" Also, face off is a really good movie. This is one of the lamest comments on here so I will add that I think that there should have been a legion of zombies in your yard.

Did you know that all zombies were originally people who got up way too early, and stressed out their heart by doing things like running for no reason, then when the zombie infestation hit they were all way more susceptible?

Allie, I was laughing over today's post, and then I went and read the stuff in your sidebar again, and I was reading your mission statement about how you've never written about pirates or sharks, and I was thinking - why HAVEN'T you written about pirates? I mean, the zombies are great and all, but it just seems like pirates would make awesome writing material. Think about it.

You need to watch zombie strippers, if you haven't seen it before....or even if you have, watch it again. Who doesn't love the idea that stripper zombies are hotter than just plain stippers??? Oh and like any good zombie movie....EVERYONE DIES IN THE END! Best plot ever!

Ps. Sorry if I ruined it for you. This is why I'm not one of those people that write the summary without giving it all away.

I, of a nice natural ability to fall asleep around when I want to at night, couldn't sleep last night. And I laid in bed and thought about stuff.

And I drifted to thinking about your zombie post. I know, a sad sad life I live, reviewing blogs I read at work when I can't sleep at night. But hey, remember, I'm a rookie at this no-sleep-lay-there-think-about-stuff thing.

And then it hit me, it is most definitely a Brood of Zombii. It's Brood. I win.

Then I fell asleep and dreamt that I found a wallet I lost when I was like 8, that had $5 in it. So I got 4 soft tacos at Taco Bell.

I used to have the same problem falling asleep at night. Probably because I have been working nights for 20 -something years and my body thinks it's time to get up even on my nights off...Anyway, the doc gave me some drugs to help me sleep...After 3 nights of psychotic dreams, worse than even the WORST Freddie Kreuger movie, where my youngest daughter was killed in front of me and chopeed into pieces and buried in our back yard, I gave up on the drugs and decided not sleeping was just fine.I'd rather not sleep then wake up thinking my daughter was now planted with the rose bushes...Say No To Drugs is my motto... ice cream at bedtime helps... it's been scientifically proven! Oh, and I think it would be an Army of Zombies... but a Legion would work, especially if they all died from Legionaries Disease and that's how they got to be zombies in the first place.

(unfortunately, the number of zombies in a herd is indeterminate. Experts have been unable to establish a definitive figure because their attempts at counting generally result in being devoured and/or converted. Lesson = KILL! DON'T COUNT!)

I know I'm a little late, but I'm pretty sure a grouping of zombies of 1-10 is a pack and then more than 10 is a horde. But I could be completely wrong.I mist admit, zombie fighting is like the most ultimate past time.I applaud you if you continue to take on the hoards of un-dead.